“I don’t know.” But Sostratos did know, and at last, sheepishly, he owned up to it: “I thought it might smell like spices and incenses, because so many of them come through here on their way to Hellas: pepper and cinnamon and myrrh and frankincense and I don’t know what all else. But”—he sniffed—”you’d never know it by your nose.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” Menedemos agreed. “Sidon smells like the garbage on a hot day after Sikon did up seafood the night before.”
“You’re right—it does,” Sostratos said. “That’s just what it smells like, as a matter of fact. Your family has a good cook there. Father would buy him in a heartbeat if Uncle Philodemos ever decided to sell him.”
“Not likely!”
“I didn’t think it was,” Sostratos replied. “I wouldn’t even have mentioned it if he weren’t going around Rhodes with his face like a thundercloud. Father and I have both noticed it. If Sikon’s having trouble with your father—”
“No, no, no.” Menedemos tossed his head. “It’s not Father. Father wants to keep him and wants to keep him happy, too. Like I told you before, Baukis is the one who thinks Sikon spends too much silver on our opson, and so they fight.”
“Yes, I understand that,” Sostratos said. “I can see how it would be a problem, but I still think your father ought to come between his wife and his cook so they don’t fight any more. Why doesn’t he?”
“Why?” Menedemos laughed. “I told you that before, too, my dear. For the same reason nobody comes between Antigonos and Ptolemaios, that’s why. They’d squash him between them, and then they’d go right on fighting. He’s smart enough to know it, too. He sometimes thinks he can just lay down the law”—by the way Menedemos’ mouth twisted, Uncle Philodemos often thought that around him—”but he hasn’t tried it there.”
“He could use you as his go-between,” Sostratos remarked.
He wasn’t ready for what happened next. His cousin’s face slammed shut, as if it were a door slammed in the face of an unwelcome guest. “No,” Menedemos said in a voice like a Thracian winter. “He couldn’t do that. He couldn’t do that at all.”
“Why not?” Sostratos asked. “It would seem to make good logical sense, and—”
Still in that gelid voice, Menedemos broke in: “A lot of things that seem to make good logical sense are amazingly stupid when you try them out in the real world. You never have figured that out, have you? But believe me, this is one of them.”
“Well, excuse me for existing,” Sostratos said, not only affronted but also confused, for he didn’t know how he’d managed to irk his cousin this time.
“I’ll think about it, my dear,” Menedemos replied. Had he stayed coldly angry, they would have had a real row. This time, though, something of the old sardonic glint returned to his voice and to his eye. Sostratos didn’t ask him for any more family details, but he didn’t feel like hauling off and kicking him anymore, either.
They walked past a temple. With its colonnaded front, at first glance it put Sostratos in mind of a shrine in a Hellenic polis of no particular account. But the terra-cotta figurines decorating the pediment were done in a style different from any he would have seen where Hellenes lived. And the reliefs on the frieze were not only stiff and square and blocky—plainly the product of a sculptural tradition different from his own—but also acting out a mythological scene about which he knew nothing.
Menedemos noticed something else about the temple. Pointing, he asked, “What does all the funny writing say?”
Sostratos tried to decipher it, but then tossed his head. “Give me time and I can probably puzzle it out,” he said. “But I can’t just sound it out and read it, the way I could if it were Greek. Sorry.” When someone asked him something, he hated not being able to give a precise, detailed answer. That, after all, was one of the things he was best at.
But Menedemos said, “Well, don’t worry about it, my dear. I wondered, that’s all.” As he had in Patara, he added, “If it’s not in Greek, it can’t be very important, can it?”
What would Himilkon have said had he heard that? Something memorable, Sostratos suspected. The Phoenician trader mocked Hellenes for their ignorance of languages other than their own. Back on Rhodes, Sostratos hadn’t taken him seriously. Why should he have, in a polis where Greek, naturally, ruled? But here in Sidon, the purring, coughing, choking rhythms of Aramaic surrounded him. Who spoke Greek here? Antigonos’ soldiers and clerks, along with a handful of Phoenicians who dealt with Hellenes. Drifting on this sea of strange words was intimidating, almost frightening.
It will be even worse in the country of the loudaioi, Sostratos thought glumly. Nobody there deals with Hellenes, and, from everything I’ve heard, Antigonos doesn’t bother sending many soldiers into the interior. Do I really want to try this without an interpreter?
I do, he answered himself, more than a little surprised. Why did I spend all that time and money with Himilkon, if not to do it myself? He smiled.
The truth was, he remained young enough to crave adventure. He’d been too young to go off to the ends of the earth with Alexander the Great. The men of the older generation, the ones who had gone conquering, had to look down their noses at him and his contemporaries, had to reckon them stay-at-homes who’d never measured themselves against the worst the world could do.
I can’t conquer Persia or go fight along the Indus River, Sostratos thought. That’s been done. But I can do a little exploring of my own. I can, and I will.
“When you go to Ioudaia, will you ride a horse or a donkey?” Menedemos asked as a donkey with several amphorai lashed to its back squeezed past the Rhodians.
“A donkey, I think,” Sostratos said. “I’m no cavalryman, and never will be. Besides, bandits are less likely to want to steal a donkey than a horse.”
“Bandits steal, and that’s all you need to say about that,” Menedemos answered. “You’d have a better chance to get away on horseback.”
“Not unless all the sailors who come with me are on horseback, too,” Sostratos said. “Or do you think I’d save my gore and let them perish?”
Menedemos shrugged. “Such things have been known to happen—but let it go, if the idea bothers you. Next question—will you hire your beast, or buy it outright?”
“Both, probably,” Sostratos said. “I’ll want one to carry things and one to ride. I’m thinking now of buying them, and then selling them again before we sail. With luck, that’ll be cheaper than hiring them. If the dealers try to gouge me, that’s when I’ll think about doing it the other way.”
“Of course they’ll try to gouge you,” Menedemos said. “That’s why they’re in business.”
“Oh, I know. But there’s a difference between gouging and gouging, if you know what I mean,” Sostratos said. “Making a profit is one thing; cheating a foreigner is something else again, and I don’t intend to put up with it.”
His cousin dipped his head. “You make good sense. The only thing you have to be sure to do is get back several days before we sail, so you don’t have to sell in a hurry and take the first offer you get, whatever it happens to be.”
“If I can, certainly,” Sostratos said. “I don’t want to lose money on the deal—or as little as I can, anyhow—but I can’t promise what I’ll be doing in the country of the Ioudaioi, either.”
“Whatever you’re doing there, don’t get so interested that you forget the season till it’s wintertime,” Menedemos said. “If you think we’ll wait around for you and then risk sailing in bad weather, you’re daft.”
“You’re the daft one, if you think I’d do anything like that,” Sostratos retorted. Menedemos only laughed, and Sostratos realized his cousin had been teasing him.
Before he could say anything or even begin to plot a revenge, a skinny Phoenician of about his own age spoke to him and Menedemos in bad Greek: “You two, you Hellenes, yes?”
“No, of course not,” Menedemos said, straight-faced. “We’re Sakai from the plains beyond P
ersia.”
The Phoenician looked confused. Sostratos gave Menedemos a dirty look. “Pay no attention to my cousin,” he told the fellow. “Yes, we’re Hellenes. What can we do for you?”
“You trader men?” the Phoenician asked. “You want to trade?”
“Yes, we’re traders,” Sostratos said cautiously. “I don’t know if we want to trade with you or not. What have you got, and what do you want?”
“I got cinnamon, masters. You know cinnamon? You want cinnamon?”
Sostratos and Menedemos looked at each other. How likely was this scrawny, obviously poor man to have anything worth buying? A silent answer passed between them: not very. Still, Sostratos said, “Show us what you’ve got.”
“I do.” The fellow reached inside his robe and took out a folded cloth. “Hold out hands. I show.” Sostratos did. The Phoenician poured some dried plants into his palm, saying, “Smell. Quality number one, yes?”
Sure enough, the sharp, tangy odor of cinnamon tickled Sostratos’ nose. But he shifted from Greek to Aramaic to say, “You dog! You son of a dog! You thief! You sell trash, and say ‘quality number one’? You liar!” Himilkon had taught him plenty of scornful expressions. “These are weeds with powdered cinnamon for smell. This is what they are worth.” He threw them down and ground them under his foot.
He hadn’t really expected to embarrass the Phoenician, and he didn’t.
The young man only grinned, not a bit abashed. “Ah, my master, you do know something of this business,” he said in his own language. “We could work together, make much money off stupid Ionians.”
“Go away,” Sostratos said in Aramaic. That didn’t convey much of what he wanted to get across, so he switched to Greek: “Go howl. To the crows with you.”
“What was that all about?” Menedemos asked once the Phoenician, still unabashed, had gone his way. “I gather he was trying to trick us, but you were speaking his language, so I don’t know how.”
“Didn’t you see what he gave me? He tried to pass off some worthless leaves and stems as cinnamon. He might have done it, too, if I didn’t know what a quill of cinnamon was supposed to look like. And then, when I showed I did, he tried to get us to go into business with him and gull other Hellenes.”
Menedemos laughed. “You almost have to admire such a thorough thief.”
“Maybe you do,” Sostratos said. “I don’t. I just wish he’d jump off a cliff. He’ll end up cheating some poor, trusting soul out of a lot of silver.”
“As long as it’s not me,” Menedemos said.
Sostratos started to dip his head, then checked himself. “No,” he said. “That’s not right. You shouldn’t want him to cheat anybody.”
“Why not?” his cousin asked. “If someone else is dumb enough to let that Phoenician take advantage of him, why should I worry? It’s the fool’s lookout, not mine.”
“Cheats shouldn’t be allowed to do business,” Sostratos said. “As a matter of fact, they aren’t allowed to do business. Every polis has laws against people who sell one thing and say it’s another, the same as every polis has laws against people who use false weights and measures.”
“That still doesn’t mean you aren’t supposed to keep your eyes open,” Menedemos replied. “If somebody you run into on the street tells you he’s got all the treasure Alexander took and he’ll sell it to you for two minai, don’t you deserve to lose your money if you’re stupid and greedy enough to believe him?”
“Of course you do,” Sostratos answered. “You deserve to be a laughingstock, too. But that doesn’t mean the other fellow shouldn’t be punished for cheating you.”
“Spoilsport. I admire a clever thief.”
“How much would you admire one who was clever enough to cheat you?”
Menedemos didn’t answer, not in words. But, by the way he strutted a little more than he had been doing, he clearly suggested such a thief was yet to be born. Sostratos also kept his mouth shut. Doubting his cousin too loudly would only start a fight, and he didn’t want that.
When he and Menedemos came to the main market square in Sidon, they both stopped at the edge and stared before plunging in. Everything seemed much more tightly crowded than in an agora in a Hellenic polis. Stalls and tents and stands were everywhere, with only narrow lanes through them for customers—and for hawkers who walked about selling things like dates and cheap jewelry from trays they either carried or secured to their waists with harnesses of leather or rope.
When Sostratos did step into the maelstrom, he felt overwhelmed. Everywhere, people haggled and argued in guttural Aramaic. They gesticulated frantically, to bolster whatever points they were making.
He snapped his fingers. “Heureka!” he exclaimed.
“That’s nice,” Menedemos said. “What have you found?”
“Why this place isn’t like one of our agorai.”
“And the answer is?” his cousin asked.
“They’re just talking business here,” Sostratos said. “Business and nothing else. How much this costs, or how much of that they can buy for so many sigloi—’shekels,’ they say in Aramaic. And that’s all.”
Menedemos yawned. “That’s boring, is what it is. Business is all very well—don’t get me wrong—but there are other things in life, too.”
“I should hope so,” Sostratos said. In a polis full of Hellenes, the agora wasn’t only the place where people bought and sold goods. It was also the beating heart of a city’s life. Men gathered there to talk politics, to gossip, to show off new clothes, to meet friends, and to do all the other things that made life worthwhile. Where did the Phoenicians do those things? Did the Phoenicians do those things? If they did, the market square gave no sign of it.
Looking around, Menedemos said, “It may not be a polis, but there’s sure a lot for sale, isn’t there?”
“Oh, yes, without a doubt. Nobody ever said the Phoenicians weren’t formidable merchants. That’s why we’re here, after all,” Sostratos said. “But the place feels . . . empty, if you’re a Hellene.”
“I think part of it’s that everybody’s speaking a foreign language,” Menedemos said. “I noticed that in a couple of the Italian towns we visited, and Aramaic sounds a lot less like Greek than Oscan does.”
“That’s part of it,” Sostratos admitted, “but only part. The Italians knew what an agora was for.”
“Well, yes,” his cousin said. “Even so, though, with us likely being here all summer long, I think I’m going to have to rent a room in the town. I don’t see how I can do my business off the Aphrodite.”
“I won’t argue with you, my dear,” Sostratos said. “Do what you have to do. Me, I’m going to look for a donkey tomorrow.” He eyed Menedemos in a thoughtful way. “One I can ride, that is.”
“Ha,” Menedemos said. “Ha, ha. Ha, ha, ha. If you were half as funny as you think you are, you’d be twice as funny as you really are.” Sostratos had to think that over before deciding his cousin had scored a point.
As Menedemos haggled with an innkeeper, he wished he’d gone with Sostratos to learn a little Aramaic from Himilkon. The innkeeper spoke a rudimentary sort of Greek: he knew numbers and yes and no and a startling collection of obscenities. Even so, Menedemos was sure the fellow missed all the fine points of his argument.
“No,” the Phoenician said now. “Too low. Pay more or—” He pointed toward the doorway.
The wretch had no style, no subtlety. Menedemos lost patience. “Hail,” he said, and walked away.
He was almost to the doorway when the Phoenician said, “Wait.”
“Why?” Menedemos asked. The innkeeper looked blank. Maybe nobody’d ever asked him such a philosophical question before. Menedemos tried again: “Why should I wait? For what? How much less do you say I’d have to pay?”
That finally got through to the fellow. He named a price halfway between what Menedemos had offered and what he himself had insisted on up till now. Menedemos tossed his head. The gesture meant nothing to the Ph
oenician. Remembering he was in a country full of barbarians, Menedemos shook his head, no matter how unnatural the motion seemed to him. For good measure, he started toward the door again.
“Thief,” the innkeeper said. Menedemos found it interesting that he should know the word when his Greek was so limited. The Rhodian bowed, as if at a compliment. The Phoenician said something in his own language. By his tone, Menedemos doubted it was a compliment. He bowed again. The Phoenician added another string of harsh gutturals, but then cut the difference between his price and Menedemos’ in half again.
“There, you see? You can be reasonable,” Menedemos said. Odds were, the words went straight past the innkeeper. Menedemos raised his own price very slightly. The Phoenician made a wounded noise and clutched at his chest with both hands, as if Menedemos had shot him with an arrow. When that bit of theater failed to impress Menedemos, the barbarian nodded brusquely and stuck out his hand. “Deal,” he said.
Clasping it, Menedemos wondered if he’d made a good bargain or a bad one. In Rhodes, he would have been pleased to rent a room for this price. But were prices here generally higher or lower than those back home? He didn’t know. Figuring it out wasn’t easy, either. Working back and forth between drakhmai and sigloi made his head ache; the local silver coins were worth just over two Rhodian drakhmai each. Sostratos seemed to have little trouble shifting from one to the other, but Sostratos had been born with a counting board between the ears. Menedemos’ mathematical accomplishments were much more modest.
The room itself was about what he’d expected. It was small and close, furnished with a bed, a couple of rickety stools, and a chamber pot. Who’d been in the bed before? What bugs waited there for the next arrival? Just thinking of the question was enough to make Menedemos start scratching.
He knew he dared not leave anything in the room unguarded. He sighed. That would mean paying a sailor something extra to keep an eye on things while he went out to sell. The expense would make Sostratos grumble. Any expense made Sostratos grumble. But the expense of missing trade goods would be worse.
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